Sequenza21

The Friday night concert at the Ojai Music Festival was the premiere performance of “Slide”, a musical work of theatre by Steven Mackey and Rinde Eckert, and performed by the two with eighth blackbird as performer/musicians. For the title, think of those cardboard holders of 35mm photographic images. The composition was named for a series of related psychological experiments in which subjects were shown out-of-focus images from slides, and asked to guess the subject of the image, which would then abruptly come into focus. In “Slide”, the principal character is the psychologist who ran the experiments, sorting through his box

The freeway ends a few miles from Ojai. You have to slow down to get there. You look at the hills and at the valley floor. You look at the trees. You think about the concerts you’ll hear over the next hundred hours. The group eighth blackbird was named Music Director of this 63rd instance of the Ojai Music Festival, and this initially-surprising choice is looking to be one of Thomas Morris’ more inspired ideas. They’ve put together an exciting program. (Yes, I do say that almost every year.) Here’s an eighth blackbird blog about this year’s event. Last night’s

If, like me, you’re a San Franciscan who’d rather have your mind blown than numbed on a Monday night, Other Minds is hoping you’ll turn out for a benefit movie screening this coming Monday, June 15th. The film, which bears the politicially-incorrect title The Revenge of the Dead Indians: In Memoriam John Cage, is neither a documentary nor a feature, but it’s scored with John Cage’s music, plus found audio landscapes.  Encounters with market vendors and street cleaners mix in with Cage tributes from Frank Zappa, Noam Chomsky, Yoko Ono, Frank Gehry, Ellsworth Kelly,  and Merce Cunningham, directed by Henning

David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion, which won the Pulitzer last year, was released today on a  Harmonia Mundi recording.  Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices, who co-commissioned the piece with Carnegie Hall, perform the piece beautifully, and there are nice details in this studio recording that were only hinted at in the live recording which Carnegie Hall made available after the premiere.  You can hear streaming audio here, buy through Amazon here, or support the evil iTunes empire here. My most devoted fans (hi Mom!) will remember that I interviewed David about Match Girl, the Pulitzer, and other things

On June 9, 2009 the prestigious Finnish classical recording label Ondine announced a change in ownership to Naxos International. Additionally, the label will be distributed in the U.S. and in Canada by Naxos of America beginning on July 1. Ondine was founded 1985 by Reijo Kiilunen in Helsinki, where the Finnish classical label is still based and today offers an extremely eclectic catalogue of both Finnish contemporary music and recordings with major Finnish and international artists. “I’m extremely excited that Naxos was keen to become our owner,” said Reijo Kiilunen, Managing Director of Ondine. “Naxos shares our solid commitment to

I was saddened to learn today that John Kreckler passed away earlier this week. John was probably best known to composers, performers, and new music audiences as the co-director of the Locrian Chamber Players, a New York-based ensemble that performs exclusively music less than a decade old. I’d just seen John at the Locrian concert last week. Diva Goodfriend-Koven was performing two of my solo flute pieces. The atmosphere was light and friendly. He sat with me at the dress rehearsal, and joked that I should have given Diva more corrections after the run through (I hadn’t had much to say –